Friday, October 31, 2008

“The International Children’s Digital Library Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community.”

The International Children’s Digital Library contains children's books that can be read for free online. There over 30+ languages represented in this collection of books. Here are a few books in this amazing collection:

Sydney and the Sea Monster(New Zealand - 1999) Sydney the penguin, who was an inventor, lived at a safe beach. Safe that is until a large ship drifted out of the mist hunting whales and seals. With his friend Bill the whale, Sydney devised a cunning invention to frighten away the intruders.

Fairyland(Japan - 1949) A collection of pictorial representations of 7 Japanese folk tales.

A girl refuses to let fear overcome her when her mother is late to pick her up. Instead, her wild imagination leads her to think of whimsical situations like riding on the back of a turtle or flying with an eagle that may explain her mothers' tardiness.

A collection of traditional Jewish folk-tales about the festivals, including a story about the trees that kissed each other on the eve of Tu Bishvat (the New Year for Trees), the poor man who cannot afford to buy food for Passover and writes a letter to God, or about the golden candelabra that blinds the robbers who come to steal it, and many other stories.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

If you include a site specification in your query, search engines restrict the search results to the site of the domain you specify. For example, if you want to search for admissions information from Western Washington University, enter the following query in Yahoo, Google, or Live Search: admissions site:wwu.edu

Notice that the search results from Live Search are restricted to pages on the Western Washington University site:

Search TipsYou can find a wealth of search tips for Google, Live Search, and Yahoo at the following sites:

Saturday, October 25, 2008

The Tolt Pipeline Trail runs almost 14 miles between Bothell and Duvall alongside the City of Seattle’s Tolt Pipeline. The Tolt Pipeline Trail is popular with off-road bicyclists, equestrians, and hikers. During the fall you can see dramatic fall foliage.

The trail is provided through an agreement between King County and the City of Seattle and makes use of the pipeline’s wide right-of-way and soft-surface access road. To find out about access points and other info about the Tolt Pipeline Trail, visit the King County Parks page, or refer to the Tolt Pipeline Trail Map.

An Aerial View of the Trail You can use Live Search Maps to view the Tolt Pipeline Trail. The image on the right shows a bird’s eye view of the trail provided by Live Search Maps. To find out more about using bird’s eye views, see the previous posting, A bird’s eye view of Redmond High School.

Other Blog Postings on Trails Here’s a list of other Redmond Library blog postings on regional trails:

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Each week, Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, talks to authors, editors, and critics about new books. He also talks with Times colleagues about the literary scene, and checks in with Dwight Garner for best-seller news. The program is available as a podcast on NYTimes.com and iTunes. The downloadable audio files are in mp3 format.

This week Alex Kuczynski on Alec Baldwin’s memoir of divorce; Charles McGrath on a Nobel Prize controversy; James Traub on Gen. David Petraeus; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

This is a one time book discussion for anyone that wants to discuss the book selected for the King County Reads at KCLS program. Three Cups of Teaby David Relin, tells the stirring tale of Greg Mortenson, an American mountain climber and nurse who becomes an unlikely champion of education in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tom Brokaw calls the book "one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time".

About Greg Mortensen Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace, and co-author of New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea, which has been a #1 New York Times bestseller for 82 weeks since its January 2007 release, and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.

The Central Asia Institute’s mission is to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The philosophy is to empower the local people through their own initiative.

As of 2010, Central Asia Institute has successfully established 145 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide (or have provided) education to over 64,000 students, with a emphasis on girls’ education.

The following picture shows little girls from Khanday School getting their uniforms. Khanday is a village in the Hushe Valley, which is in remote northeastern Pakistan.

On August 14th, 2008, Pakistan’s government announced on its Independence Day, that Greg Mortenson will receive Pakistan’ highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education, and literacy in rural areas for the last fifteen years. Pakistan’s President will confer the award on March 23rd, 2009, in an official ceremony in Islamabad.

In 2009, journalist Karin Ronnow and photographer Teru Kuwayama traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan several times to document Greg Mortenson and Central Asia Institute projects. The 44-page report, Journey of Hope, is the result of their in-depth visit.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 600,000 images that have been digitized from collections of The New York Public Library. These images include illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, and illustrated books. Here are two of the many collections in the NYPL Digital Gallery.

Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942 The NYPL Digital Gallery contains a collection of urban photos entitled, Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942. This collection of photos spans a wide range of New York City locations: Hudson River mansions, including Washington Irving's home and vicinity in the 1860s; street views by Alice Austen from 1896; and a panorama of Fifth Avenue from 1911. The following image of a double-decker bus was taken by Alice Austen.

Elizabeth Alice Austen was the privileged daughter of a prominent Staten Island family. She took up photography at age ten. The Library's holdings consists of Austen's 1896 camera record of Manhattan street scenes. Although Austen never worked professionally as a photographer, she always strove for professional standards. As a result, her pictures of her home life, her social contemporaries and their daily activities provide a rich and intimate vision of a now-vanished way of life.

“The low-resolution images available on the website are suitable for immediate printing or downloading to provide good-quality reference copies for a wide range of educational, creative, and research purposes.”